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Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

bbc.com

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Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#71
post #21

Counterexample: A poor man finds a magic lamp. He summons the genie, and wishes for great fortune. (Rags to riches.) He makes another wish, and it horribly backfires. (Icarus.) No longer trusting genies, he wishes he'd never found the lamp. The genie rewinds time. A poor man finds a magic lamp.... (Infinite loop plot not included in the classification.) EDIT: Downvoter, how would you classify this story?

Also see: Finnagans Wake, which is a loop of a story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#72
I think people's motivations for writing fiction - novels - could be reduced to six.

Some of these motivations are simple to understand - 'get rich', 'get recognised', 'sheer pleasure', 'because your failed author parents want you to repeat their folly' and so on. I have seen 'there are only n types of plot' stories before, I would much rather have motivations for writing novels being the categorisation as then I would be able to better identify what I did want to read, i.e. the 'banned books'.

There is a big difference between what some Eton educated aristocrat dictates to their secretary so they can be lauded in society as an 'author' to what someone in jail with no education writes to get themselves their freedom. This applies to words beyond novels too. For example the 'left wing' writings of Tony Benn (UK anti-war movement, aristocrat, dictated to secretaries) matter very little to me compared to what Malcolm X had to say.

New stories that don't necessarily fit into pigeonholes can come from real life where that period of history is a bit of a lie and the truth can't be told under any circumstances. During these times the only truth can be found in novels that transpose the names, times and places for something that the audience won't self-censor. So we end up with 'Oceania' or 'Animal Farm' with it not being clear what regime is being critiqued exactly.

Such works of fiction are written because something needs to be said, or at least the author thinks so. It is not like the author has decided 'I want to become a writer' and googled a plot from the internet to rip off. In this way literature is written, not just novels to make money with.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#73
post #43

Plot structures are tools. All else being equal it's a good idea to pick a plot that's as simple as possible and hang the interesting stuff off that. The classic mistake of beginning writers is to go for complexity in plot and then spend their entire time serving that plot to the detriment of their characters. That said, of course not every story fits into some basic set of plot outlines without some serious mental a…

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Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#74
post #67
post #21

Counterexample: A poor man finds a magic lamp. He summons the genie, and wishes for great fortune. (Rags to riches.) He makes another wish, and it horribly backfires. (Icarus.) No longer trusting genies, he wishes he'd never found the lamp. The genie rewinds time. A poor man finds a magic lamp.... (Infinite loop plot not included in the classification.) EDIT: Downvoter, how would you classify this story?

There's a traditional variant of this schema: A poor man uses all his money to buy a horse. "You must be happy", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man. The next day, the horse escapes. "Your hard-earned money, and your horse, both gone. You must be sad", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man. A few days later, the horse comes back, with a female horse. "Now you have two horses, and very soon…

That sounds a lot like some kind of episodic serial.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#75
post #46
post #43

Plot structures are tools. All else being equal it's a good idea to pick a plot that's as simple as possible and hang the interesting stuff off that. The classic mistake of beginning writers is to go for complexity in plot and then spend their entire time serving that plot to the detriment of their characters. That said, of course not every story fits into some basic set of plot outlines without some serious mental a…

Can you give reference(s) for that beginner’s mistake? I’ve never heard it before and it’s definitely something I do. Would love to learn more about this!

It's just a general clear communication principle that can take many forms. If you have filler content for the sake of padding out the work, it isn't communicating anything, and the audience will know it.

Take that thought in the other direction - how to communicate more efficiently - and you end up with snappy movie dialogue and non-verbal interaction that can push a plot forward really quickly.

With any kind of communication the challenges involve a mix of both knowing what techniques are possible, and having messages worth focusing those techniques on.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#76
post #67
post #21

Counterexample: A poor man finds a magic lamp. He summons the genie, and wishes for great fortune. (Rags to riches.) He makes another wish, and it horribly backfires. (Icarus.) No longer trusting genies, he wishes he'd never found the lamp. The genie rewinds time. A poor man finds a magic lamp.... (Infinite loop plot not included in the classification.) EDIT: Downvoter, how would you classify this story?

There's a traditional variant of this schema: A poor man uses all his money to buy a horse. "You must be happy", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man. The next day, the horse escapes. "Your hard-earned money, and your horse, both gone. You must be sad", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man. A few days later, the horse comes back, with a female horse. "Now you have two horses, and very soon…

This is a parable, not a novel. It's hard to imagine expanding this narrative to anything novel-length and also readable, so it's unrelated to TFA.

Of course, GP post is similarly OT.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#77
post #18

In the early-90's I saw Vonnegut give a presentation in which he talked about his story graph idea. However, the video linked to in the article appears to end before the most interesting part. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-84vuR1f90 Hamlet. It's never clear whether what's happening belongs more toward the good or bad side of the vertical axis. The curve you get is a flat horizontal line. That's art. Never clearly…

The curve you get is a flat horizontal line. That's art.

Maybe. It's also death.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#78

This feels pretty reductive. They chose one variable to measure stories on, fortune, and then of course all of these stories follow a short list of possible patterns. This counts as research?

They don't choose fortune, they do sentiment analysis on the words in the text. That this might be mapped or interpreted as being the same as fortune is an interpretation. For example positive words don't necessarily mean fortune in the plot, but often a plot showing fortune will have positive words. This is an important distinction when looking at whether it's good or bad research.

If they found that despite the fact that a story can start happy and get sad, no story had ever done so, and it actually seemed to be impossible, well that would be quite an amazing discovery.

However they only discovered that a variable can go up, down, or stay the same. Not exactly rocket science.

Re: Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types

#80
post #67
post #21

Counterexample: A poor man finds a magic lamp. He summons the genie, and wishes for great fortune. (Rags to riches.) He makes another wish, and it horribly backfires. (Icarus.) No longer trusting genies, he wishes he'd never found the lamp. The genie rewinds time. A poor man finds a magic lamp.... (Infinite loop plot not included in the classification.) EDIT: Downvoter, how would you classify this story?

There's a traditional variant of this schema: A poor man uses all his money to buy a horse. "You must be happy", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man. The next day, the horse escapes. "Your hard-earned money, and your horse, both gone. You must be sad", his neighbor says. "I don't know", answers the man. A few days later, the horse comes back, with a female horse. "Now you have two horses, and very soon…

This is from the Tao Te Ching. This verses teaches one to be balanced and not to be attached to outcomes because in life there are endless highs and lows.
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